Database management is a system of managing the information that is used to support a company’s business operations. It involves storing data, distributing it to users and applications, editing it as needed and monitoring changes to data and stopping data corruption due unexpected failure. It is a part of a company’s informational infrastructure which aids in decision making and corporate growth, as well as compliance with laws such as the GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act.
The first database systems were developed in the 1960s by Charles Bachman, IBM and others. They developed into information management systems (IMS) that allowed for the storage and retrieve large amounts of data for a wide range of applications, from the calculation of inventory to supporting complicated financial accounting and human resources functions.
A database is a set of tables which organize data according to the specific scheme, for example one-to-many relationships. It makes use of primary keys to identify records, and also allows cross-references between tables. Each table has a collection of fields, referred to as attributes, which provide information about data entities. Relational models, developed by E. F. “TedCodd Codd in the 1970s at IBM and IBM, are the most widely used type of database today. This design is based upon normalizing data to make it simpler to use. It also makes it simpler to update data without the necessity of changing several databases.
Most DBMSs support multiple types of databases by offering different internal and external levels of organization. The internal level is concerned with costs, scalability, and other operational concerns including the layout of the physical storage. The external level is how the database is displayed in user interfaces and other applications. It could comprise a mix of external views based on different models of data and can include virtual tables that are computed using generic data in order to improve the performance.